One of the first actions of Nicola Sturgeon, after her recent appointment as the new First Minister of Scotland, was to announce her first cabinet would consist of five men and five women. Apparently, on the basis of merit, exactly the same number of men and women deserved the posts, although barely more than a third of the members of the Scottish parliament are women. Righto.

Last Monday I was interviewed at some length on BBC Radio Scotland about the issue of gender balance at the top of organisations, in politics and elsewhere, and of course there had to be an obligatory feminist throwing around silly comments. There generally is – sometimes two, with a hostile female presenter, for good measure. But I have no complaints about the female presenter in this case, and later called the programme to ask that my appreciation be passed on to her.

The audio file is here. As usual, please leave any comments on our YouTube channel, rather than here.